Endangered Baby Animals

Tiny. Adorable. Threatened. These furry tots represent the future of their at-risk species.

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Polar Bears

Because of climate change-induced Arctic sea ice melting, polar bears are threatened—up to only 25,000 exist in the wild. The cute little fella in this photo, Knut, was rejected by his mother at birth and raised by hand at a German Zoo before unexpectedly passing away in April 2011.

(Photo: Ho New/Reuters)

African Rhinocerouses

A four-day old Easter Black Rhinocerous calf sits with her mother in their enclosure at Chester Zoo in Chester, northern England. By 1992, poachers had killed off 96 percent of the rhino population. Today, only 21,000 exist, about 90 percent in South Africa. After darting it with a tranquilizer, poachers use a chainsaw to cut away the rhino's horns, leaving the drugged animal to bleed to death.

(Photo: Phil Noble/Reuters)

Orangutans

Once numbering in the hundreds of thousands and found all over Southeast Asia and Southern China, orangutans are critically endangered today and found only in the tropical rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Habitat loss (caused by logging and gold mining) has reduced the species’ wild population to between 15,000 and 25,000. In this photo, Jun, a three-month old female, rests in a baby cot on Orang Utan Island in Malaysia’s Bukit Merah Resort.

(Photo: Zainal Abd Halim/Reuters)

Tree Kangaroos

A baby Buerger's tree kangaroo appears out of her mother's pouch at the San Diego Zoo in January 2003. The endangered species of tree kangaroo is native to Papua New Guinea. Hunted for food by indigenous communities across their Papua New Guinea range, the species has experienced a sharp decline in population numbers. The species is susceptible to an unlikely predator: domestic dogs.

(Photo: Zoological Society of San Diego/Getty Images)

Amur Leopards

In December 2009, a four-week-old Amur leopard baby is presented to the public for the first time at an animal park in Hodenhagen, northern Germany. According to the animal park, only around 34 Amur leopards are left in the wild, which makes them one of the rarest felids in the world.

(Photo: Nigel Treblin/AFP/Getty Images)

Gorillas

A two-week old gorilla is bottle-fed milk by his surrogate parent, a zoo-keeper at a German Zoo. "Habitat loss, climate change, infectious disease and illegal hunting for both meat and the live pet trade" have combined to push gorillas to the brink of extinction, reports World Wildlife Fund.

(Photo: Reinhard Krarre/Reuters)

Somali Wild Asses

A subspecies of the endangered African Wild Ass, the Somali Wild Ass is one of nature's rarest mammals. The exact size of the small population left in the wild is unknown, but around 200 Somali Wild Asses live in zoos around the world. The young foal seen here—Hakaba—was born on November 16, 2010 in Switzerland's Zoo Basel.

(Photo: Zooborn.com)

Tasmanian Devils

Since 2001, the Tasmanian Devil has been fighting for survival against an unusual enemy—Devil Facial Tumor Disease. Because the deadly infectious cancer has ravaged the population to the point where the species is now endangered, Taronga, Australia has created a national program (seen above) to safeguard against the the complete collapse of the species in the wild.

(Photo: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images)

Margays

A vet holds a nine-day old Margay on August 13, 2011. The wee lad was found in a rural area south of Medellín and taken to the Animal Welfare Foundation, in Medellin, Colombia. Hunted for fur trade, the rare cat is almost extinct in the northern part of its range in the rainforests of Mexico and Central and South America east of the Andes mountains.

(Photo: Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images)

Bengal Tigers

Classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the total population of the Bengal tiger is believed to only be 2,500. The biggest threat to the wild tiger populations is the illegal black market trading of body parts between India, Nepal and India. The cub seen here was born into a breeding program at a zoo in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in 2011.

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